"The ratio between the material Cornell collected and the material that ended up in his boxes was probably a thousand to one." — Deborah Solomon, Joseph Cornell The Material by Kay Ryan Whatever is done leaves a hole in the possible, a snip in the gauze, a marble and thimble missing from the immaterial. The laws are cruel on this point. The undone can’t be patched or stretched. The wounds last. The bundles of nothing that are our gift at birth, the lavish trains we trail into our span like vans of seamless promise, like fresh sheets in baskets, are our stock. We must extract parts to do work. As time passes, the promise is tattered like a battle flag above a war we hope mattered.